State of Mind
by Sherbert20111
Summary: Hermione doesn't like unresolved questions, like how it was that Draco found her late husband's body. They pick at her until she feels she is unravelling from the inside. Dramione.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: JK Rowling owns all things Harry Potter. Post war. Adult humour, English spellings and references. Enjoy.

The day of the funeral, in the house that Hermione and Ron shared, she receives a letter from Viktor Krum. The passage that stays with her, is him saying he wishes he could have done more.

The little house, set apart, but inside the grounds of the Burrow has been filled to overflowing with wellwishers. When the last guest has left, she changes into flannel pajamas, locks all the doors and draws all the curtains. Stoking the sitting room fire, she reads every piece of Viktor's correspondence over the years, before burning them. She used to think how funny it was that Ron would get so jealous over something that was nothing at all. In between each cremation, she takes a hesitant sip of hot cocoa laced with fire whiskey and considers, that it might have been her work that got him killed.

When she is all out of offerings, she curls up under a blanket on the sofa and watches the fire consume itself until nothing is left.

"Drinking alone?"

The bored drawl is directly connected to every hackle Hermione has ever possessed.

"Obviously not," she tells the supercilious features in the glowing embers.

"They _all _left you?"

"I'm fine," she says firmly, drawing the blanket up to her chin, which only goes to expose her bare toes. She is fine, up to the point that she feels like she might be hollow inside and never warm again.

"I'm coming back."

She runs the length of her wand through her hand over and again, feeling the uneven texture of the vine ripple against her skin. It is the only way she knows to tell herself that this is really real.

She says nothing, stares and stares until the face disappears in a shower of sparks, thinking that the only reason Draco Malfoy would pay a house call is to further his own ends.

-:-

In the Solar at Malfoy Manor, curtains draw themselves against the blank expanse of floor to ceiling windows. Draco's Mother and her new lover enter, otherwise unannounced. In the only room to have emerged unscathed from the War, the vast hexagonal dimensions of the room have always been Draco's favourite place to linger, outside of his Ministry office. There have been changes, everything evolves to survive after all, but the room hasn't suffered under a change in stewardship.

Draco sits back on his haunches and fastidiously extracts a black monogrammed handkerchief from the top pocket of his suit jacket. He flaps it open with a swift movement and wipes the soot from his otherwise impeccable person. His expression is not unlike that of a cat, who, having played endlessly with its food, now realises it is not playing back and may be broken, or possibly in fact dead.

He rests his hands on his thighs, staring contemplatively into the glowing coals while he considers that the unremarkable features of the most remarkably talented witch he has ever met, after his Mother, seem to have embedded themselves on the inside of his eyelids.

"She is not taking it well," Narcissa's low voice interrupts his thoughts.

"Not as well as you," Draco replies diffidently, choosing not to mention the almost indecent speed with which his Mother aligned herself with another Magical house. There are qualities his Mother owns that he admires, and equally those that make him choke with rage. The latter category adequately encompasses the fact that she is even now, unashamedly rifling through his head. Everyone else he could keep out, but never her. He is bound in a way that is both embracing and at the same time, absolutely suffocating.

Draco rises smoothly, turning to look at the pair in the doorway. A tall man with jet black hair left unfashionably long stands behind Narcissa, with his arms about her waist and face tucked into the crook of her shoulder. Narcissa purrs, "you will go."

"It's my time." Draco's reply could be taken as defensive, or affirmative.

He drops the soiled handkerchief to the ornate rug, where it winks out of sight. A freshly laundered folded replacement appears at the snap of his fingers, a testament to Dobby's successor. He replaces the linen neatly in his top pocket and adjusts the point until it sits just so. When he is happy with the result, he slides a long woollen overcoat over the shoulders of his lean frame, adjusting the cuffs for comfort.

"What if she has made the house unplottable?" Narcissa asks suddenly.

"She won't have," Draco replies, drawing his wand. "She wants to be found." The thought of Hermione's blank eyes makes his gut clench uncomfortably. It reminds him of something he chooses to face, only when he has braced himself for the experience of it.

"Don't wait supper for me." He nods his head sharply in good-bye, "Mother, Sir."

A deep cracking noise marks his exit by disapparation.

Narcissa tips her head up and to the side to meet the gaze of the man behind her. "He loves her."

"Enough?"

"Desperately."

"There are rumours about her."

"There are rumours about you," she says lightly, dusting his shoulder with a chaste kiss.

"But those are true," he half laughs, turning her to more fully appreciate his embrace.

"He is my son. He will do whatever it takes." The last is said with a cold certainty.

-:-

She must have fallen asleep, because the sharp rap of the knuckles on glass has Hermione wide awake and panicked. She takes the blanket with her, draped around her shoulders to the frigid terracotta tiles of the mudroom.

"Malfoy?" she calls through the wood of the door. Air surges around the house and scuds down the chimney she left behind, but the wards she has so assiduously placed hold fast. "Malfoy!"

"Are you going to let me in or am I supposed to freeze to death valiantly on your behalf?" His voice is so muffled, it could be anybody. The snarling note is right at least.

"How do you approach a Hippogriff?"

"Fuck off Granger, I Fire-called you twenty minutes ago."

"_Lumos minima_," Hermione whispers, braced against the drain that even this slight magic takes from her. She doesn't bother to correct the name he uses, he has already had his money's worth at her expense over the fact that she kept her surname rather than taking Ron's. In many ways their relationship is no different from when they both resided at Hogwarts, only now it is coated with the thin veneer that adult responsibilities bring. She draws the deadbolt and cracks the door open, to be presented with Malfoy's back while he scans the darkness beyond.

"Mackerel sky," he mutters to himself, although how he sees it at night is beyond her.

_Not long wet, not long dry_ flits across her mind, random and disconcerting.

His angular shape shouldering inside and refastening the door with infinite care blocks the view of the pale night blooming Minochs that line the rear pathway, planted only last Spring and in full sway.

He regards her with silvered probing eyes. "You look terrible, you should sleep."

"I was until you turned up." Her chin sticks out defiantly, blood courses through her, leaving her jittery in this small, cold space, in front of the man responsible for finding the cooling body of her husband. She is unwilling to give ground to him. This is her domain, as ill-equipped as she feels to defend it.

"Why aren't you in a safe house?" His raises his wand slowly, divining how the wards are set, how many and how strong. His eyes never leave her, although they tighten in the corners at what he finds and his lips flatten, then part.

"_Genius loci," _he adds another ward, or more she is not sure, the words he uses are sibilant and make her skin prickle. The one she heard is Dark Arts, bordering on the Forbidden, it calls the Spirit of the Place to stand guard. The air feels drier and pensive, like every mote is expectant and watchful.

Among the tall stemmed flowers outside, a long, thin serpent that looked like a stone ornament uncoils from the warmth of a tile hung low on a South facing wall and weaves itself sinuously between the stalks, until it is closer to the back door. The likeness of a Green Man carved into one of the corbels on the front porch peels back leafy eyelids and squints into the distance.

"This is our home. My home," she self corrects.

"I never took you for a fool, Granger." He has his hand on her upper arm, using it to turn her back the way she has come, back to the dying fire in the sitting room.

"I can look after myself." She shakes herself out of his grasp and takes herself ahead of him into the wavering orange firelight, feeling where her clothes chafe against his unwelcome fingerprints from seconds ago.

He huffs through his nose, "and the rest of the Establishment?"

She stands at the threshold, looking back at him, dark in darkness so that only his head and hair stand out. He reminds her of a Bunraku puppeteer preparing for the stage until only his eyes will remain uncovered. "What do you mean?"

"Do you really think this is all about you? How very Gryffindor."

There is a moments pause, before she says, "I thought I might draw them out."

"And do you have any idea of who 'they' are?" He draws off black leather gloves by pinching each fingertip in turn, folds and stows them in a dark overcoat pocket, one on either side. He kicks himself for thinking that her looks were unremarkable. Below wide eyes, pale cheeks give way to a stubborn chin. He fixates on her mouth for a second before pulling away, eyeing the deep 'v' of a pajama top clearly meant for someone larger. The fabric shivers over the peaks of her breasts, made more pronounced when she crosses her arms under them, her wand gripped limply in one hand.

"You came didn't you?"

He smiles thinly at that. He advances as she retreats, his tone harsh and musing.

"I have my reasons. And you let me in, just like Ron did his murderer."

Her reaction is almost too fast to see, an open hand striking at him, first one, reflexively as an answer to the taunt, then both palms in quick successive blows to his face, his head, body any part she can reach. His face turns from shocked surprise to one of grim determination, he raises his hands, crossing his forearms to protect his face, turning aside and cursing half words between the hollow thumps of her landing her frustrations.

He hisses, "fucking stop," belatedly realising she is not in a state to listen, not until she is shaking and he is panting with the effort of capturing her flailing fists. He takes a knee solidly to the meat of his thigh, grunting lowly before forcing his leg between hers as a protective measure and winding the length of his arms around her waist with her arms pinioned inside.

It occurs to him that in all the time that they have worked in the same building, sparred together, Hermione has always belonged to someone else. She has never hit him before, probably because that someone had always steered her away, or deflected the argument onto themselves. Weasley. Past tense. It feels good to have this out in the open. It feels good to have a fight on his hands, something physical between them. He grapples awkwardly with the furious female who is all sharp elbows and stinging palms, so strong and fierce in such a puny package.

"You're a fucking menace," he breathes, hot, into her neck, chest heaving for air, "to yourself," he adds, gripping tighter against her increasing struggles until she cannot move without him moving first.

"We were happy," she spits at him, railing at the tears that rise and fall without her permission. Her shoulders shake, finally grieving. Malfoy's arms redirect, his hands make soothing motions across Hermione's back and shoulders, he rests his chin on her head and breathes her in.

In the morning he will ask her about the lovely pale pink flowers by the back door, and about petals that a man, who was not her husband, told her they remind him of the scent and texture of her skin. Then he will ask her again, to tell him how _happy_ they were."

-:-

The Ministry has been rebuilt, new posts filled and endless paperwork to process. Hermione smiles like she is supposed to at the platitudes and the "good to see you backs." At the end of an honest day's work, she shares an overcrowded elevator car and goes home to an empty apartment. Dinner is a Marks and Spencer microwave meal and there is no washing up, since she eats it straight from the plastic dish, with the plastic cutlery it comes with, in front of Muggle TV.

Her evenings are filled with the torture that is building flat packed furniture, from instructions with exploded pictures and badly translated Swedish. By the time she has finished she has a dozen matching hex keys and a room full of superfluous cardboard. Her kitchen boasts more cleverly disguised places for hiding things than Diagon Alley, her sitting room an array of empty and inviting floor to ceiling bookcases, magically altered to accommodate both the facts that the walls are not flat nor the corners square. Mood lighting is provided by a liquid filled cylinder which encloses a stream of bubbles; from time to time the colour changes, red to green, pink to blue. A canopic jar rests in opulent isolation on the mantel over a boarded up fireplace.

On the second day of her second week, she passes him in one of the corridors some half an hour to the end of the day. He is already carrying his robes, a half dozen yellow roses in one hand and ushering an awestruck intern ahead of him with the other. The young woman's body language is exactly right to appeal to the walking ego a mere step behind.

"Granger," he nods, pausing. Malfoy doesn't say anything else. Anything at all. She could wilt with relief. Every new mention of loss tears at a scab slow enough to heal as it is and anything else isn't something she wants to discuss.

"I hope you are seeing her home," she says evenly. It's none of her business, but she has lost count of the number of times she has had to call Maintenance already. to remove the graffiti about Malfoy in the ladies lavatory.

His lips twitch, as do his perfectly arched eyebrows under his trademark shock of white-blond hair. There is always an aura of restrained _something_ around him. She feels it like the magical field of an untried wand, never knowing if it will do her biding or flay her alive.

"I shall," his low voice grates at her and the last word more than most. "After."

Her chin jerks up, not that he sees, since he has already turned away. He looks surprised to find her still standing there when he reaches to close the guard doors on the elevator, but does not look away once he has found her eyes with his own. Not once, until the car drops from sight. They are almost as angry as her own.


	2. Chapter 2

The trials continue, while Magical Society goes about cleaning its own house. More than once, she is called to testify. More than once she waits to hear Malfoy give his side of the story. His recounts are faultless, tying in with what she knows, but does not say. Some stories are not hers to tell. His voice has a sonorous quality, but the content is bald and harsh. His facts are unforgiving, his fingers tap-tap to their own beat while he speaks, are still during the rebuttal and start again with the pitch and roll of his voice.

He turns his face aside at the death threats that are hurled at him, baring his teeth only once, when an accused references his Mother. She watches his knuckles whiten painfully against the rail he grips and witnesses the limits of his patience while his words spill out with more sibilance and venom. She notes that his eyes move more often than the rest of him. They avoid her at every turn until the end, when he affords her an ambivalent nod.

She follows him once, from the dock to the bank of three elevators, where one is ready and waiting. He steps to the back of the car and turns, apparently untroubled to find her on his heels, but not on board. She stands in the corridor, still, as if rooted to the spot. She knows she has faced worse things alone than Malfoy in an elevator car.

"Coming or not? He asks over her head, impatience masked, but barely.

"You wear a lot of black," she says, because he does. She thinks she has never seen him out of them and then blushes furiously because her mind wanders when she is not concentrating on concentrating.

"I know a lot of people who are dead," he replies, so very matter of fact. "And so do you."

She wasn't ready for it and she folds her lips inwards to bite at them rather than cry.

He closes the guard doors without another sound, slapping at the buttons with the heel of his hand before giving her his back. His head tips up, she watches as he grips the front of his hair while he disappears from sight.

-:-

At home, Hermione stands in front of her dresser in nothing but her underwear and nylons. The mirror shows her body more lushly rounded than she remembers it, although her hip bones are more sharply prominent than they should be. Behind her, the wardrobe door hangs open, displaying a rail with more black hanging from it than any other colour.

She fingers the one dark blue jersey dress with a print that might be leaves or just ovals in a paler tone, jumping half out of her skin when the clock radio bursts into life, letting her know about the congestion on the M25 around Windsor and problems on the Circle line. It's only later, when there is no mention of the Underground stoppage on the evening news, that she realises the Tube must have stopped, because someone she dimly knew had the worst day ever.

-:-

The Department of Mysteries is Hermione's new home, in so far that she spends more time there than anywhere else. In some areas, wizarding robes are eschewed for lab coats, silence is revered, along with science, rather than the posturing and pratting about that goes on in the rest of the building.

She has been fortunate enough to develop an idea that first came to her in the Library at Hogwarts – how to make the vast quantity of knowledge more accessible and digestible to the student body. A practical solution presented itself when she took up work at the Ministry. She accidently dropped a thesaurus in the Think Tank in the Department of Mysteries, and the entire book appeared to dissolve in under a minute. Prophecies immediately following the incidents used a lot of awfully long words.

The intern was supposed to be part of a cross-border graduation program. By all accounts, she was lucky to get her own assistant back after what happened. The brief time he was away seemed to have honed his thinking.

Hermione has an office in the main building for administrative purposes, since access to the Mysteries is restricted at all times to Authorised Personnel only, and her interaction is required from time to time. The name given to her and her colleagues are Unspeakables. It is meant to denote the fact that they do not speak about their work with anyone outside of their own distinct circle. Draco Malfoy is not one of them, but has obtained the use of the same name in reference to himself, in his own inimitable way.

His office is three floors up from hers, on the corner of the building so he has windows on two sides. She passes the closed door on her way back from the Department of Mysteries. She could swear she didn't even glance at his nameplate, but Milicent Fabray calls out on entering her own office next door that he had left for a working lunch and wouldn't be back this afternoon.

Hermione doesn't ask who his lunch companion is and in the morning doesn't have to, the lavatory is very informative. The current score by her count is 9 out of 10 prefer blonds, the less than perfect rating is because the intern did not leave a remark, it would have been difficult, from under a Tube train. Maintenance have stopped asking what she wants and just gives her a time by which they will have the job done.

-:-

In the sanctuary of a cul-de-sac in the heart of the Mysteries, her young assistant, Colwyn Perdot, a Ravenclaw from the class of '95, freshly returned from the wilds of Bulgaria, extracts a precise amount of fluid from a rectangular tank not unlike a domestic aquarium. Passing it into a stoppered test tube and holding it up to the light, he compares it to a colour chart, making concise notes on parchment snapped fast to a clipboard. In the far corner of the tank, a wizened brain the size of a monkey nut drifts idly with neural tails trailing behind it.

"What happened?"

"I thought it was a population crash but the pages per millilitre are steady and there is no sign of any brain fragmentation." His accent enforces the recognisable globalisation that the wizarding community has undergone in recent times. Colwyn is the product of a French father and Welsh mother, which makes watching him watch the International Quidditch tournaments a sport in its own right.

Hermione inspects the bottom of the tank. Instead of the gravel bed, all she can see looks like grey sludge. The humorous 'no fishing' ornament, normally in plain sight, is completed obscured.

She rests her fingertips against the glass and waits. After a time, the sludge stirs, resolving into thousands of individual mounds of grey matter. She can feel the temperature of the glass rise with the activity in the cloudy fluid.

"What are we feeding them today?"

"Arcane and Arcanalia, Magical Properties of the Highland Lochs and The Complete Works of Shakespeare."

A few brains detach from the tank bed, drifting to hover around where she touches the glass.

"Give me the first two. I want to check the last one."

The stack of books appear on the workbench beside her elbow.

"You can go," she says thoughtfully, watching the swarm of brains rising to collect around her contact. "I'll write it up." From time to time, what looks like a small electrical discharge is emitted from the neural tails of brains in contact with the glass. _Welcome back. We know. Everything._

"I think they were sulking without you," comments the Ravenclaw.

"They are not supposed to be emotive in this state."

"I don't think feelings die when a body does."

Hermione does not say anything, but cannot agree more. Feelings she does not want to put a name claw at her throat. Her voice is wooden, when it comes.

"That will be all."

Leaving her hand in contact with tank she turns her face to her young colleague and offers a wan smile to take the sting from her words. The test tube he held, that was on the way to his lab coat pocket, diverts, and is left resting on the counter top. Turning away and back to the tank means that she misses the wistful expression on his face as he departs.

In leaving her, he misses the fact that brains continue to cluster around Hermione's contact with the tank. If one stood back, in the right light, the presentation and orientation of them provide shading across the expanding wall of contact, such that they take on the appearance of a human face.

When she is sure she is alone, she sniffs and clears her throat. With a wave of her wand, two of the books shred themselves to confetti and funnel into the tank fluid. The liquid clouds further immediately, the 'face' dissolves, light reflects from brains moving at breakneck speed to devour the new pages. The tank soon clears to its previous condition.

Watching the brains movement after the feeding frenzy reminds Hermione of a study she undertook as a Muggle, on Brownian motion, and equally of Ron. Their last morning together was the inane rambling meeting and unmeeting of minds that shared space results in. What came next, was the unpredicted draught, driving their respective particles apart.

-:-

At lunch, she destroys a salmon and cream cheese bagel in the canteen, leaving most of it on her plate and eating only the silvers of fish and a few crumbs stuck to her fingers. Witch Weekly letters page is its usual collection of falsehoods, rumours and titillating tidbits. She memorises every third word in every second article on the Letters page to get what she needs. Malfoy takes the seat opposite her uninvited, brooding under heavy brows and elegantly black, apart from where his skin shows as almost translucent white.

"You need to eat more."

She glares at him balefully. All he has brought with him is a Mars bar and a can of full fat Coke, neither of which have been touched.

"Not going out today?" She replies archly. She has a pile of parchment to annihilate back in her office before the avalanche of it smothers her desk entirely and no time for his games. He crosses one lithe leg over the other and balances his wand on his raised knee where it spins like a weather-vane, towards her.

"Heaven forbid I should feed before I fuck." His cultured tone belies the crudeness of his statement. The words worm their way under her clothes, making her skin prickle.

"What's your point?" She thinks of geisha girls as the table for a meal, of him taking sustenance from a naked body using nothing but his tongue and teeth. His cheeks hollow, almost as if he was swallowing a smile. She realises she was staring at his mouth. Her shoulders snap back, putting more distance between her, and him.

Shockingly fast he grasps her wrist, holding her tight, tighter, tightest, eventually grinding the bones against each other so that she pulls back, not because it hurts, not really, but because it is both alien and familiar.

"You're alive, but you don't feel it." He lets her tug against his grip, opening his fingers to allow her to slip through. She rubs the reddened skin absently, letting his words sink in and find their own level inside her.

His wand has clattered to the floor and he has let it roll between their feet. She feels the brush of air when he _accios_ it back into his hand. He leaves the chocolate and cola. After a while, so does she.

-:-

When Hermione leaves for the evening, she counts the stories up until she finds his window with the light still on. She huddles in the coat that is a size too big for her now and buys fish and chips in a polystyrene tray to fill the walk home. The vinegar stabs at her tongue, there is more batter than fish, but it is hot, satisfies a need and is what she fancies. She sucks at her fingers when she is done, tonguing the grooves clean, thinking about Malfoy and his mouth.

At home she changes the bed; showers, believing it will help relax her and infuriates herself when it doesn't. She re-dresses more casually, certain that sleep is as distant as it ever was, swaps her heels for flats and light for dark. Work will keep her occupied shortly, she has only to wait.

Muggle TV spams her brain with nothing that holds her attention and the grease from supper repeats unpleasantly. She flicks through the book of Shakespeare by the flickering light of the TV, as much for distraction as entertainment, until a quote from Much Ado About Nothing has her up and out of her seat. _"For which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?" _

There is no wine. She knows, although she checks the under counter fridge to be sure. She doesn't want a bottle, for fear she might do it justice.

Donning Ron's black leather bomber jacket, she stuffs her keys in one pocket and a twenty pound note in the other. A glance in the mirror shows her chin set stubbornly above wide determined eyes, there is work to be done after all.

-:-

Her Local is busy enough to pack the street outside the main doors, some patrons smoking, some not, all are loud and opinionated. Politics and light entertainment, the budget, the scandals, flicker in and out of her hearing. None of it makes any sense within the context in which she lives and works. The bouncers let her in without a second glance, just another Muggle or so she would have them believe.

Pubs have a specific scent, a flavour to the air all their own and this one is no different. It has as much impact as the blare of a car horn or the opening bars of a musical piece. She has never brought anyone here before, it has no memory for her other than exactly how it is now.

She orders a large glass of white wine, pays and leans her back against the bar, hugging the sweating glass to her cheek. The first taste is a gulp, the second and subsequent more ladylike, or at least she would like to think so. The chill liquid goes down as her shoulders go up.

His hair is startling enough in daylight, it is incandescent under Muggle lighting and she is not the only one noticing. Something about him keeps the vixens away though, perhaps that he dresses like an undertaker or loan shark. Perhaps now, because she is here.

Silence settles like silt between them. She didn't seek him out, this is her turf, closest to her home. She wouldn't expect to find him in a Muggle establishment anyway, but here he is. As with all of these places the light is best at the bar and neither of them have anything to hide, so that is where they stay.

"I didn't know you didn't drink." She says, stares at him endlessly stirring the thick black of his coffee. The dark liquid moves sluggishly against the white bone china, the spoon circles without a single scrape and his hand shifts barely at all.

"I didn't know you did." Everything he says sounds like an accusation. She cups the bottom of her wine glass, as if to hide the contents or how little is left. It's enough to make her not want it, except that she chose it and it's hers. She owns her choices, it's what she does.

"I'm not leaving with you," she says firmly.

"That's good then," his cheeks hollow again, although his eyes are pinned securely to the bowl of the silver spoon brought up and out of his coffee, just enough to eddy and ripple the smoothly swirling surface. "Because you don't have a surreptitious bone in your body."

"I haven't had the practice," she bites. She could have left it, but can't. It wouldn't look right.

He drinks in a smooth motion, from the way his fingers curl about the curve of the cup rather than the handle, to the mesmeric glide of his adam's apple, she watches him. His eyes narrow, but do not close and then they tighten at the edges, as if the beverage was still too sour despite the paper cases of a dozen sugar cubes scattered every which way, or he remembers something he'd rather not.

He must get a manicure regularly somewhere for his fingers to look like that. She never thought him vain before, perhaps he always has been, or has become that way. It would be one way to get the blood off them at least.

"No," he says deliberately replacing the cup dead centre to the saucer and adjusts the handle. "You haven't."

He peels one of her hands from her glass, stretching her arm towards him and turning her wrist to examine it and the faint bruising that appeared after her shower. His fingers are as pale as the skin where her veins run blue below the surface.

"I'm sorry. You make me forget myself."

She snatches it back when she realises he means to touch his lips to it. He tips his head far back, mouth parting to say something more and then nothing.

-:-

A/N: Brownian motion or pedesis describes the apparently random movement of dust particles in air, or pollen grains on water. It was instrumental in proving the theory that atoms and particles exist.

Geishas have been known to serve as human platters for food.

There is a version of 'Much Ado' available on DVD with David Tennant. Shakespeare has never looked better on a person.


	3. Chapter 3

He leaves before she does, offering her a palm of mixed coins before he goes. It takes her a moment to realise that although he has Muggle money, he has no idea what any of it is. Exposing his weaknesses is an odd kind of trust. Her fingers pick out the correct change for his tab and a tip, piling it haphazardly next to his cup and saucer.

She curls the tips of his fingers up and pushes his hand away when she has finished. He is warmer than she is, in spite of the wine and the jacket she never took off. They share a callous, on the inside of the thumb, where using a quill marks like a scar. They share the memory of a night where she lost herself and he found her and held her together until daybreak. The way he looks at her tells her he remembers it well, although he mentions it, not at all.

He glances at the clock behind the bar, then shrewdly at her face while returning the remaining coins to his pants pocket.

"Are you going back to the Burrow?"

"No. Molly wanted me to stay, but I couldn't." Her forehead pulls itself into a frown, she liberates it with the brush of her hand. The crush of memories remain though. "I have a place here. Nothing special, but it's new, and mine."

"Does it have a couch?"

She stiffens and takes a sip. "What's wrong with your place?"

"Mother is in town."

"Give her my best."

The ghost of a smile settles over his austere features. A lambency flickers briefly in the pewter glaze of his eyes.

"I might," he says quietly and is gone.

She sniffs his cup after he leaves, but finds nothing other than the harsh bitterness of coffee grounds and the sweet sting of too much sugar. She tracks the path he took, through the mess of bodies to the door, where his eyes catch hers, and the perfect shade of his suit stands out, even against the pitch black of night beyond. He looks like he is re-evaluating his decision to leave, or to leave without her, she is not sure. The feeling she gets, when he turns with obvious reluctance towards the door, is not one she wants to put a name to.

Her wine is warmer than she would like by the time she finishes it. She does, finish it. When she leaves, the remaining sugar cubes and all the paper cases are in her pocket.

-:-

She shouldn't be bringing her work home. She shouldn't have bought a chilled bottle of White Grenache on the way. She shouldn't have this much trouble finding a corkscrew in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp. Drawers slam and implements clatter, until she has unearthed a device left to her by the late Arthur Weasley.

The antique twin prong cork puller looks like a knuckleduster with darker intent. She slips three fingers into the brass ring and advances with purpose, only to find that the bottle is a screw top after all. She knows the device is also known as an 'Ah so;' this is not the phrase running through her mind at all, but sounds quite like it.

Glass in hand, the lighting in her apartment transitions to warm orange when she approaches the cylinder light. A little sardonically she croons, "hi honey, I'm home." One after the other, the sugar cube papers find their way into the fluid in the cylinder. As an afterthought, she also inoculates it with a small test tube of cloudy liquid, that found its way into her handbag before she left work.

A single brain the size of her thumbnail zigzags lazily towards the top when she stands close. It bumps once or twice against the glass until Hermione presses her forehead into contact. She closes her eyes, registering the hum through the glass that the bubbles make and uses the soft monotone to clear her mind. In a flash, wording registers. '_Taste and Smile."_ Hermione doesn't remember seeing the famous sugar manufacturer's logo or slogan anywhere. She is not in the habit of missing details like Tate & Lyle typically splashed across their produce.

She whispers back, "does this work for you?" but nothing else comes through.

-:-

Heads of Department meet once a month, ostensibly to catch up. More often than not, these things are chaired badly, which makes Hermione irritable. Draco sits opposite her which is almost worse than him sitting next to her. She draws his hairline and the shape of his skull on a scrap of parchment, filling in the blank face with the Slytherin crest because she can't get his lips or eyes exactly right. She burns with embarrassment when he catches her glancing at him, although there is no possible way he could see what she was doing.

He twists the onyx and gold signet ring on his pinkie finger with angry turns all the time the attendees talk over each other. She knows he has worn his family's seal for a long time now, even before his father's demise. There had been something in the newspaper about The Big Houses and their most eligible heirs after the War. He wasn't top of the list, or bottom either and the blurb had said something about him coming into his title early. She only knows because she reads everything about everything.

The next agenda item deteriorates into a slanging match about whether or not the monument in the lobby should be re-established. She suggests that the money might be better spent on the rapid response unit at St Mungo's. Malfoy nods infinitesimally in her direction and it is a thing of beauty to see the other bureaucrats shiver with the urgency to please.

The meeting draws to a close. She waits for the scrimmage at the door to pass, only noticing that he has too, when she stands and gathers her papers, considering his motives.

"People will talk."

"Let them." He pushes off the wall with nonchalant ease, hands plunged into his pants pockets, which serves only to direct her gaze. "Mother said to invite you to dinner."

Hermione's jaw drops before she can stop herself.

"Why ever would she do that?" Hermione blurts in horror at the prospect, imagining a stiff formal affair in a cavernous hall where all of the diners share an oversized table with spaces between them too large to talk discretely.

"It was him. The Professor said it would be the correct form, for a war widow."

"He would know." The gossip mongers had a field day when the Snape made his interest in the Malfoy widow public. She doesn't care what people do behind closed doors, but others do. Her heart skitter-thumps at the implications, then stutters at how, if it came to pass, her acceptance would be interpreted. If it was and she did, and if there was more than dinner.

"Actually, he has an opinion on your Eagle friend."

"The intern?"

"Was an Eagle." He means Bulgarian. He means a spy, or the acceptable equivalent tem for it.

"She could have been useful."

"She was." He almost purrs. The pale pink of his tongue drags against the deeper pink of his lower lips. Hermione tightens her grip on her paperwork hard enough to mark her own skin.

There are a lot of things Hermione won't share, like the fact that Viktor Krum has kept in touch on and off through the years and how mad that made Ron, no matter how many times she told him he was just a friend.

She sent her condolences at the sudden, if, mysterious circumstances of Krum's Father's death. If the rumours are true, he bought his position as Minister for Sport in his own country, and his family's money is powerful enough to topple his government, or run it, behind the scenes. Up until quite recently, Krum sends her books he thinks she might have an interest in. She hasn't had one since the intern came, and went.

It is difficult to see a friend and ally in a different light, almost as difficult as seeing an enemy as anything but.

If other rumours are true, Krum earned his position by virtue of his career as Bulgarian Seeker rather than the political might of Krum Publishing Inc and had nothing to do with his Father's death, but it doesn't hurt for others to think that he did, which is why, amongst other things that the rumours persist.

She never told anyone why, on the day of Ron's funeral, she wore a piece of jet jewellery prominently enough for it to be visible in the newspaper coverage. The shape, a double headed eagle could have been seen as a warning, or an invitation to treat.

"What's he like?" She redirects, unwilling to give anything further than might lead the conversation further towards Ron and his killer. "Snape I mean?" She means as a step-father, or perhaps as a human-being, without the pressure of a double life and the woman he loves by his side.

"Better." She dissects his answer, finding it unhelpful as to whether it refers to the man or the experience of him being family.

-:-

There are times when Hermione feels Ron's presence like a phantom limb. He has never been in the new apartment, never stood framed by the window or leant against the bedroom doorway, hogged the couch or fallen asleep on the remote control with the TV on and the mute button depressed, but she sees him there. The days after nights like these she comes in late and works later.

Her top drawer is stockpiled with chocolate, but she has no appetite to eat. She considers her options for supper while she waits for the elevator, after all, the body must be fed while the mind recovers. Her skin feels stretched and drawn. She is later and Malfoy is later still. His skin is bright like a new pin, his cologne invasive and inviting. The lateness of the hour demands that the citrus scents are gone, what is left is spice, sandalwood and overlies a day hard pressed to keep rage at the stupidity of others within self-imposed confines.

He takes possession of the elevator button panel in the car by default. She breathes shallowly and resents taking any part of him in. The invitation for dinner has not come and now, having passed the peak of horrified anticipation, she wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

The shocking part is not when the elevator car stops at the Lobby and he moves towards her instead of the guard doors, rather the gentleness with which he takes her hand and presses the very tip of her fingers to his lips. The exhale from his nostrils drifts over the back of her hand and chases the same feeling up her arm as far as her shoulder. Her entire limb feels like he breathed on her all at once, it pulses like pins and needles.

She can feel the muscles he uses to speak and not speak move the air around them. The stretch and void of the things he does not say against the vibration and timbre of the certainty of his actions.

"You are still. Alive." He moves her own hand back towards her, twisting it to rest against her spluttering heart. It is not the unsteady beat of herself that has her attention though, it is the brush of him, against the underside of her breast. She draws herself in, tight against her backbone. Hunger twists unexpected in its bearded lair.

Ron has been in this building, probably in this very spot with others crammed in like cattle around him, or with her, just the two of them. She can't find him now. Not a single trace.

He drops her hand. When it becomes clear that she will not walk either ahead of him, or by his side, Malfoy leaves her in the elevator car. His heels click mockingly on the Lobby tile, like the last seconds of an alarm clock or the countdown on an explosive device.

-:-

A/N The corkscrew is a real thing

There is an outtake from C1. It might have to be posted on H&V. You know why.


	4. Chapter 4

"Were you my friend?" Pansy Parkinson is still beautiful, even perched adrift in the centre of a perfectly made hospital bed. Her clothes are bright against the drab sage green and pale sterile blue of St Mungo's décor. Features pinched with the permanence of illness, she manages to look more ethereal than frail.

Hermione frowns briefly. "How much do you remember?"

"I remember getting a lot of detentions. We used to go up to the Hero's hall, you know the one with all the heads of the Roman generals? There was no-where to hide, not really. I used to lean over the bannister and watch the staircases and he would come and find me. _Silencio_ doesn't work you know, not if you really, really want to express yourself. _Mufflato_ now, I don't remember us ever trying _mufflato._" Pansy doesn't look at her, rather the spot just beyond Hermione's head.

Hermione flushes hotly. Everyone knew Malfoy and Pansy went at it like rabbits at school. She thought he must have learnt every inch of his obnoxious swagger under her careful tutelage. She and Ron had found their own way eventually, along with the usual mishaps of scraped knees and so many sorrys. Her experiences don't sound anything like as adventurous as Pansy's.

"How much do you remember about the war?" Hermione's clipboard says that Pansy was there the day that Death Eaters disrupted the Goose Fair in Lincoln as a last grand hoorah; a mere two days before the ceasefire was made official, the carnage had been appalling. Muggle news had reported a cracked gas main since there were simply too many deaths to cover up. Pansy's sister and Grandmother were among them.

"She doesn't remember." Hermione turns in surprise at his voice. There is no anger in what he says, merely the cold statement of fact. His eyes are flinty, tightly controlled in the creases.

"How do you know?" Hermione bristles, she has a job to do after all.

"I took them," he says, dropping a cellophane wrapped bundle of yellow roses on the bedspread. There is more pain in his eyes than she thinks she has ever seen in a living, breathing individual.

"Were you my friend?" Pansy's voice is hopeful.

"Yes," he says. "We have known each other a very long time."

"Tell me about the war? A lady was asking?" Hermione realises suddenly that Pansy thinks she has already left.

"Let's talk about something else. We'll go and feed the ducks in St James' Park." He holds Hermione's gaze for a long time. The weight of it stuffs hot air into her throat and behind her eyes.

Pansy's smile is childlike. He scoops her up like she weighs nothing at all and drags out a wheelchair from where it was shrouded in shadow. She smooth's a blanket over her own knees, then tucks her hands underneath. "You'll tell me what they look like? Each and every one?"

"Each and every one," he murmurs into her hair, driving the chair skilfully around Hermione with a flourish.

-:-

Viktor's silence makes her nervous. She is concerned that she missed one of the intern's dead drop boxes. Her lack of certainty is _his_ fault. Malfoy moved too soon, without enquiring. Perhaps he doesn't know exactly what Hermione's position entails. It is difficult to say, he is difficult to read. Pansy's memories or lack of them is simply another thorn in her flesh.

Torn between horror, sympathy and frustration, Hermione tracks him down to his office. His door must have a damping spell on it because it is refusing to slam, serving to exacerbate her annoyance with all things _him_ related.

"You had no right! We have lost valuable evidence." His cold glance infuriates her, she wants him as angry as she is herself. "Did you really do that to her? You're not even on the Legilimens register!"

He pushes his chair back from his desk so sharply, it clips the back wall hard enough to make the portraits bounce. Two strides takes him to a corner drinks cabinet where a complicated wandless spell uncovers a compact pensieve built into inlaid woodwork. It is a piece of master craftsmanship and beautiful by design. Silvery liquid shimmers within, reflecting strangely off the ceiling.

He leans with his back against it, weighing her furious face with a casual sweep of his eyes. She could report him, if she were sure he took them.

"I saved what was left. Watch at the trial if you must, you're in no fit state to see it now."

"There is nothing in the prosecution papers to say that this is here." She waves a hand at the device, but means the contents therein, if they are to be any help at all. She doesn't mention Pansy.

"That is because all pensieves were recalled under the Ministerial Act s.372 to help with the war effort." Hermione knows it was for the aftermath of the war actually, to determine the innocent.

"But you still have yours."

It makes her seethe, the way he flouts the rules. He has made her a party to it by showing her.

"Yes, I still have mine."

She thinks of the compact in her handbag that Ron gave her as a wedding gift and the memories in there. She tells herself that it is different.

He reaches overhead for a crystal tumbler and scoops a measure of silver from the bowl. The liquid clears, but still moves of its own accord.

"I'd like it back." He doesn't release it to her until she uses both hands to take it from him. The skin over his cheekbone twitches when her hand touches his. His eyes darken, silver to granite grey, drawing her in until she can hardly remember to breathe. "It is part of a set."

Eleven tumblers remain, artfully arranged around three decanters full and part full of liquids that range from a deep rich burgundy to a light cognac.

"You don't drink," she says with more force than is entirely necessary, breaking his gaze and the haze he has built in her head.

"It is part of a set," he repeats. "And I've been known to keep company with those who do."

-:-

Hermione's first missive of the next day, is a report from George. Her ties to the Weasley family, such as it is, have never been stronger. Arthur's department is always been incredibly busy, more so of late. Arthur is gone but she still thinks of it as his department.

Battles breaking out into the open towards the end of the war meant stray magic frequently got absorbed by Muggle items. Some of the effects have been humorous, like the quacking rubber duck waddling across her blotter now. Others were horrifying, the flying shrapnel from a fire hydrant sliced Pansy's sister to ribbons. It reassembled itself immediately after, exploding a second and subsequent times with irregular pauses in between.

George brought her the duck in his position as Arthur's successor, not in person though, it came by owl wearing a honking Comic Relief nose over its beak. George is rarely seen out of the basement laboratories, others do the collecting for him. She has a suspicion he spends more time in the herbarium than studying the finds, but has read with interest his papers on progress with reversing some of the more terrifying curses and their effects.

The second roll of parchment she plucks from her tray is the court listing for today. At the bottom of her tray are the black and gold shavings from a black and gold wax seal. The sight of them stop her in her tracks. They do not belong to anything that she has opened today, nor were they there yesterday.

-:-

Malfoy is in the gallery for the trial of those captured alive at the Fair, sitting with his forefingers steepled under his chin for much of it. He does not fidget in his trademark black. He hardly looks like he breathes at all. He does not take notes, his eyes move all the time, more often than not to Hermione, sitting in the packed public gallery opposite.

He is not well liked, but usually the seats either side of his are taken. He sits alone this time, in the space reserved for victim's family members. He is not family, she is sure of it, going so far as the check his genealogy and records for marriage in the recess for lunch. No-one ejects him. No-one would dare.

He is absent from the court in the afternoon. She stays, to see the final act played out. Justice must be seen, and to be seen, there must be witnesses.

-:-

Late afternoon, she makes the trek from her corridor to his. She passes Malfoy's secretary and they share a nod, sharing nothing else in common, in public. The whole floor is unnaturally silent. She considers it not unlike an evacuation in the face of unquantifiable risk. In a way, it is.

There is no doubt that Malfoy runs his department with an iron grip and a ruthless efficiency that frequently leaves others reeling. He is well placed for the cultured conniving that International Relations demands, not to mention the valuable resource of himself being practically born multilingual. Parseltongue it seems, is a gateway for countless other languages. She thinks he will set his cap for Minister next year, not because he wants it yet, but to show willing and bring his competitors out of the shadows.

She has come to like the shadows, in a way, they have become a home to her. Through the informal web of women everywhere, from every level, she knows a great deal about a great many things that might be of value, come the day, lavatory etchings aside.

For all that from time to time, the low lash of his words reach outside of the confines of his office, she has yet to hear him raise his voice. This is a fine ability for for a Minister in her view, less so is the unenviable fact he also has the highest turnover of staff in the building. It makes it very difficult to keep a mole. Despite this, there appears to be an unending supply of new blood with which to fill the dead men's and women's shoes.

With the side of her face pressed against the dark wood of his closed door, she calls, "Malfoy?" It opens by itself. He sits behind his desk looking his usual unruffled self. Surprisingly his hands are flat on the top, either side of a tumbler of amber liquid. Guiltily she remembers she still has its fellow. The decanter sits an arm's length away with the stopper oddly askew.

She knows before she looks for further signs. They are there, on the floor in a splatter of yellow rose petals; in the empty stalks, still in their cellophane flung carelessly into a corner. Ten other tumblers are in shredded shining fragments from the cabinet to the door, swept by an impotent arm, venting it's piteous rage. His face is a shade paler than usual and there is blood from a graze on his wrist on his otherwise immaculate hands.

She waits for him to speak. Eventually he does.

"Kidney failure. Very common in paraplegics, you know."

She sits in the chair in front of his desk, where supplicants bide. She knows what he says is true on two counts: from her own extensive reading on the matter, but also from a hastily scribbled silver of parchment. She does not know if he means to tell her he is aware she is the spider in the very centre of the Ministry web.

"Where is everyone?"

"I told them to go."

She could imagine him doing it with immutable calm, and minions and colleagues scurrying away as if Death himself strode the halls. For the first time, she wonders if there is something in the tumbler other than fire whiskey, then immediately retracts the thought. He is stronger than that, stronger than her probably, but everyone has their limit. His eyes drift away from her, to the temptation on his desk.

"Mother drank. She said it helped her for a short time." It is not the first mention of his Mother, but she is still surprised when he shares anything of himself.

Hermione doesn't comment, trying to imagine Narcissa, both elegant as ever and pissed as a newt. It makes her consider the woman almost human. Almost. She knows grief does strange things to people. George is a case in point if ever there was one.

"I don't think I will," he says finally, pushing the tumbler towards her. "And you?"

"As a toast?" She eyes the glass much like a mink, the loaded gun.

His lips twist. "That, is a much better excuse."

The liquid is down his throat in a flash. He holds the empty tumbler dangling from finger and thumb of the hand held across his mouth while the scalding burn of alcohol makes his eyes smart. He wants to cough she thinks, but he won't let himself, because his shoulders heave once without a sound. A solitary tear escapes and then he is reaching for the decanter and refilling the crystal offering, setting it between them.

"What's the matter Granger? Won't share a glass with me? Afraid you might do something you'll regret?" One or the other, she thinks, or both. Memory stirs, wanton and waiting. Her history with fire whiskey is recent and not pretty. A faint colour is back in his face, along with a rakish glint in his eye.

The reminder, is meant to goad, she knows, but a woman is dead and his pain comes across the desk at her in waves. This section of the Ministry would falter without him she is sure. He really is terribly good at his job. She reaches for the glass, fumbling in her pocket for her key-ring.

The rim of the glass is cold again her lips, fumes rise, scouring her sinuses. She sips, chokes, finally knocking it back in one, just to get it done and hiccoughs with her face scrunched up. A Grolsch bottle-top joins the empty tumbler on the desk.

"And that is?" His fingertips poke at the white ceramic stopper, attached to a metal chain.

"A portkey."

She surprises herself, with the unspoken offer and the audacity of it.

"What exactly is on the table?" The answer is a Muggle artefact, popular in the '80's. The answer she gives is different.

"Company. With someone who knows a lot of dead people."

She takes a breath, steeling herself for a refusal. His silver eyes glitter like the scattered segments of glass. She knows he will turn up reeling, if at all. Perhaps at this moment, it is what he needs, someone to keep his secrets safe when he has made himself incapable. Turn and turn about is fair play after all.

A/N: posting schedule always on my profile.


	5. Chapter 5

The evening segues into night. Hermione boxes up the other half of the spaghetti Bolognese from the little Italian place on the corner and places it thoughtfully in her overstocked fridge. Where there was white space before, there are eggs and bacon, sausage and black pudding; half an unsliced loaf and a virgin jar of apricot jam. The vegetable boxes are full to bursting with salad and the like. A pack of butter emptied freshly into a glass caddy silently accuses her of profligacy.

She opens the window to dispel the heavy atmosphere of thunder brewing, but it does little, other than to let the burnt exhaust smell of the city invade. Outside, the steady patter of rain rises to a crescendo and fades. She spends a long time in the shower, with her face upturned to the water jets, letting the torrent drum some sense into her.

The wards go off with the muted 'merp' of friend rather than foe. It will be Ginny or Molly. Or not. Sighing she stops the water, not bothering to dry herself and throws on a white towelling robe that will do the job. She can smell him long before she can see him.

"I thought you were going to drink it, not wear it." She grumbles crossly.

Malfoy pirouettes delicately in the very centre of her sitting room to face the sound of her voice. She forgets that she is wearing next to nothing and has her hair down, because he is here, in this state, and now what? His hair plastered to his scalp gives his head a more skull-like connotation than ever.

"Did you walk?" She doesn't wait for an answer, jerking the sash on her dressing gown tighter, she stomps the short distance and starts by peeling him out of his jacket. Every inch of the fine wool is sopping wet.

"How did you know where to come?"

A clothes horse appears exactly where she drapes the jacket. He holds out the key-chain looped over one finger.

"Didn't think I'd use a portkey without checking it out first did you?" The slur is faint, but there nonetheless, as is the sway, towards rather than away from her.

"The war is over."

"So it is."

"And I gave you the portkey."

"So you did."

She thinks about the level of paranoia he must have cultured, just to survive. She considers the job he does now, with the articulated backstabbing and horse wrangling it requires. She considers what his view might be, of her long distance relationship with Krum. Perhaps the war never ended for him, it merely entered a new phase. He only has himself to worry about, and now, so does she. It is a lonely thing.

He lets her loosen his tie and draw it from under his collar. He is taller than her, but not by much. Raising his chin for her to slip the top and next button, she feels a pulse hammering in his neck against her knuckle. He sighs when it is done, breathes in sharply when she reaches for the buckle and button on his pants to set the shirttails free.

"Not going to offer me a drink first?" Softly against the back of her neck. The fine hairs rise, all the way down her spine. He always smells so very, very good. He is too drunk she thinks, for that. It is a test. She is good at tests.

She rolls her eyes, more at the whisper of her own goose bumps than the ridiculous notion of letting him further pickle his liver. Of course she feels chilly she tells herself, her hair is still damp at best.

"I have juice. Coffee."

"Tea? Do you have tea?" Behind, beside her ear, with his face barely apart from hers. "Dreadful habit, tea."

She reaches for his cuff, stepping back and feeding the cool metal Turkish knot through crisp black linen. Holding her hand out for the other, she is unprepared for his hand slipping under against her jaw and his thumb sweeping the hollow in her cheek, driving her face upwards, towards his. She knows he feels her swallow. There was cartoon of this exact pose on the lavatory tiles only last week, only the female figure had her ankle elevated to his shoulder and his prominent erection crushed between them.

"I'll boil the kettle. The shower is just through there, go and warm up." Moving briskly away, she surrenders the space to him.

"Too cold for you?"

There are meanings and meanings, it is barely safe to answer.

"It's not healthy."

It is not healthy to want someone who has been on the other side of the fence for so long and this side for not nearly long enough. Her job is unforgiving of mistakes, as if she needed a new reminder so soon after the last. Without looking to see if he is going, she allows herself the sanctuary of the kitchen. Resting her hands on the counter top, she takes the first of a few deep breaths.

"Get a grip. He just needs a bed for tonight. That's all." Realistically she knows he could have found that at home. She tells herself it is a good thing he is drunk and she is sober. The kettle burbles and clicks off, still, there is no sound of water. The teapot warms, wisps of steam escape from the open lid. Tea leaves spoon themselves in, one for the pot, one for each cup and a little extra for luck. She fits a knitted cosy over the pot herself and clenches her fingers tightly closed, annoyed at being annoyed.

-:-

His shoes are paired neatly under the clothes horse, laces tucked in. Shirt and socks grace the lower shoulder and rail, along with a wide black leather belt. The shower-room door is not latched, she knocks anyway.

"Malfoy?" The heels of his hands are pressed deep into his eye sockets, elbows to knees, he is seated on the edge of the closed lavatory.

"I don't know how any of this works," he says, slowly raising his head. "Why on Earth would you choose to live like this?" An extra toothbrush and foreign shaving kit has found a home by the sink. Black jersey pajama boxers warm beside her clean towels, which part of her is thankful for.

"Like what?" She reaches into the shower stall to set the water going, raising her voice over the hiss of it bouncing off the tiles. "A Muggle?"

"Muggle," he shakes his head, staggering to rise with his hands at the waistband of his pants. His normally immaculate coiffure flops messily against his forehead, making him look like he has been running, or otherwise exerting himself. Like he has looked before, in a memory that feels like it ought to have been a dream. His eyes narrow. "Do you mind?"

"To remind me," she says. "Of why we strive." She turns her back, listening to the sweep of cloth against skin, of water falling interrupted and the low groan driven loud by hot water on frozen skin. Keeping her eyes low she grabs for his clothing, but it is impossible not to see the outline of a body she knows better than she should, barely hidden by the frosted glass door.

-:-

A pile of fresh bedding perches on one arm of the couch. The coffee table is host to a first attempt at sobriety. She cuddles her mug, trying not to smile at him nonchalantly wolfing his third chocolate bourbon. Keeping her eyes on his fingers and his mouth helps keep them away from his bare torso. The darker lozenge shape of his nipples keep tempting her attention, not to mention his abs, individually carved with distracting precision. He has a hand towel draped over his shoulders, his skin looks tawny next to the brilliant white.

"And where do you sleep?"

"Up there."

The mezzanine is lit by strings of fairy lights and accessed by a sturdy wooden ladder. There are ways of forcing the space magically, but she has the neighbours drop in more often than people from the Ministry. They probably think her strange enough as it is. There is also the possibly that one day, a Muggle might tempt her into an indiscretion she tells herself. She used to think it was more likely than the alternative.

"And me?"

She pats the couch and glances meaningfully at the stack of bedding, fresh from the airing cupboard. His finger taps idly against the side of his china cup while his eyes rake her face. Distrust stirs in her while she considers how quickly his inebriation seems to have passed. There are ways with a wand of course, but she thinks she would have felt it. With the exception of the size of his pupils, he could pass for his normal insouciant self.

He dips his head, studying his lap as he sweeps it free of crumbs. She snaps her eyes away before he lifts his head.

"I don't like it."

"It's only for one night."

"Tomorrow I get to sleep up there?"

"Tomorrow, is the weekend. You go home."

"Tomorrow, I go home."

He appears to consider the statement carefully. He breathes out sharply though his nose.

"Yes, I suppose I shall."

She sets her mug on to the coffee table.

"Goodnight Malfoy."

"Draco." He says it so quietly, she thought that she imagined it. "My name is Draco."

-:-

On her back, in her bed, she watches reruns of Hogwarts Quidditch games in black and white, cast against the sloping ceiling above her head, to remind her how far they have all come. The last game she remembers in her waking state, is from the year the work she does started in earnest. She remembers the crooked smile of the Hufflepuff boy who died, arms aloft, clasping hands with the Captain of the opposing team. He taught them all so much in life, and in death.

In what she does, she has ensured that he lives on, but the ethics of it gnaw at her soul. The light from the cylinder below filters up, over the dimmed fairy lights that surround her, comforting, pink.

-:-

There is a recurring dream she has, from the time when Harry, Ron and herself were chased from the Room of Requirement by fire. It might have been an easier memory if they had not gone back for Malfoy and his cohorts. Harry missed Malfoy on the first pass, taking Crabbe instead. For all that she hated flying, she had slowed, swung the broom out far enough into the great Stacks of the Forgotten for Malfoy to catch on to her and heave himself aboard.

She remembers the dry sobs of fear caulking her throat at the monstrous creatures chasing them in the roaring flames. She remembers the hard angle of Malfoy's cheekbone pressed against her shoulder and the sturdy wrap of his arms around her middle.

There are a litany of whispers she does not remember so well. In English and other tongues, they tell her she is safe, that they will make it out because she is brave and brilliant and beautiful. She hunches in her sleep, curling into the warmth at her back, between her and Fiendfyre's bite.

Briefly she grips the hands around her middle to make sure they are tight for the turn they must make to escape the flames, her thumb callous slips against another and then she is strangling the grip joint on the broom to turn, turn, turn for safety's arch, while searing beasts rise behind her. In the billowing hail of ash that runs ahead of them, is the stench of Blaise Zabini being consumed by fire.

It is enough to have her sat up and gasping. The duvet falling away from her body exposes another, languid limbed except for the broad hand clasping at her thigh in sympathy.

-:-

Sleep is impossible. Dawn threatens from the edges of the roman blinds. She keeps her eyes resolutely on replays of the Bulgaria vs England International Quidditch match flitting soundlessly across the angled ceiling overhead.

If Hermione thinks about it, there is no denying her body's attraction to the man who has joined her in her bed and lain himself down like a well-mannered Familiar. Her toiletries smell different mixed with his, rising from his skin. She is uncomfortably aware of her nipples straining against her flannel pajama top and the flux of expectant heat between her legs, she feels wired with him resting so close beside her.

He stirs, staring intently at the players on the ceiling and she tenses. She knows exactly where her wand is if she needs it. The bedcovers rearrange themselves as he moves to prop himself up on one elbow, so close but not quite over her.

"You're playing a very dangerous game."

Her eyes snap to his face, to the sleepy set of his eyelids over sharp knowing eyes.

"I know what I'm doing." She returns her attention to the Bulgarian seeker over his shoulder and the way the distant figure positions himself seconds before the plunge into a Vronski feint.

"Do you know the intern was Krum's mistress? Do you know her target was you and not who she found?"

Hermione's lips part. She can't say Ron's name, not with Malfoy in her bed. He folds himself away with a sigh, lying on his back and rests his hands over his stomach. They edge down, under the covers and out of sight. His bicep, closest to her, flexes rhythmically.

"Do you know, it is three weeks and two days since I tasted you?"

She knows it is three weeks and two days since she buried her husband. Hermione shivers involuntarily. "You should forget about that." She thinks about the button fly of the jersey shorts he wears to bed. She thinks about the sound of gasps a man makes, when he can barely breathe because of a woman. She thinks about the feeling of a couch cushion against the crown of her head, because a man's tongue has turned her senses inside out to the extent that her spine tries to break itself in two.

"You should re-marry. For your own protection. "I'd offer, but…"

Hermione bites the inside of her cheek to keep from spitting invectives.

"But?"

"You would have to come to dinner."

"So you keep saying."

When he looms a second time, it is with the realisation that although she should probably turn him down, she won't.

"Don't say no."

-:-

"I don't love you." The brutality of her words match the vicious movement she uses to rip open his boxer buttons.

"Fuck," he whispers, at the touch of her, at the cold air against his hot skin, or possibly at the words he could do without.

His lips are on hers, plucking at them with tiny nips until they part and she swallows his truncated grunt while his hips shove his cock into her hands. His tongue, God his tongue, she squeezes cruelly at the base of him to make him groan like she herself wants to. His thumbs snag the waistband of her pajama bottoms, dragging them away from her body and off over her feet. Hard fingers dig into her haunches to guide her body up his folded thighs leaving her shoulders resting against the sheets and her heels hooked over his shoulders.

Krum pauses, frozen before the dive. Hermione's multitasking has shrunk to the task of processing everywhere Malfoy touches and everywhere he doesn't.

Malfoy angles his cock down, pressing in so just the tip is covered. Her flesh slips into place around him, giving the sensation of movement where there is none. She digs her heels into the meat of his shoulders, her body bucks upwards, straining to gather him in while her eyes flutter shut and her back arches in heady expectation. He moves her steadily on to him, feeling her part against him and watching the slow opening of her mouth, as if her jaw widening was intricately connected to his invasion. Her teeth dig harshly into her bottom lip when she feels him twitch deeply inside of her.

"Want is enough." His opening rhythm is unyielding and certain, her body clenches around him on the in-stroke, clutches at him on the out-stroke. Heat rolls up her torso, colouring her chest and cheeks, sticking her pajama top to her skin. Her arms arc over her head, hands seeking for bedding to grip, to lever against.

"What is love?" he rasps, rolling his hips so the root of him smashes against her. His balls smack soft and warm into her milliseconds later. "Think you know it?

Her breath hisses against her teeth, he is so high up inside her, filling her and making her body shake with the promise of release. Her fingers reach for the hard outline of his knees to touch him somewhere, to _tell_ him.

"Want is stronger." His voice is the dim white noise behind the pound of her blood in her ears while pressure mounts in her belly, tense and hollow, walking the bars of its cage. Her body jars against his when her feet drop leaden to the mattress. He pauses to realign, dragging her into his lap and pressing his face into her chest with his arm wrapped tight around her torso. His movements are slower, more subtle this way against her swollen flesh and his pubic bone grates against her ache, making her nails carve cruelly into his shoulders and the back of his neck.

Their heavy breaths pant in turn, prolonging the agony. Her hands pass through his hair, one at his nape, pulling his adam's apple in range of her teeth, the other settling around his back.

"This is want?" she whispers, shaking with the need for this to end instead of the tortuous circling of her destination. His arms wind tighter, forcing her back and still.

"What do you want? I want to see it."

She wants to say this, she wants to say his name, but his body is moving so slowly and her eyelids are heavy like him dragging inside her, while her pulse climbs, impotent to control itself. She breaks and shivers, shuddering under him and clawing at his back and buttocks to drag his heat close enough to chase away the chills that ripple over her. His hips press sharply against her, as if he could force more of himself inside her this way. Her name is in his low groan, hot and as close into her neck as her body will permit.

In the pulsing silence that remains, his arms do not loosen. She can feel him inside, twitching and ebbing. Stretching the creaking muscles of her back forces him out and unsticks their skin. Peeling herself apart feels like exposing new skin, pinkly wet and new to a cooler reality. His hands drift down her ribs to rest on her thighs. Scrambling, she twists away from intimacy.

"Anytime," he says flatly, wiping himself off with his boxers. Her pajama bottoms briefly serve the same purpose. He folds back the covers, patient for her to re-join him.

"I meant it." She drags the pajama top hem down, as if it would make a difference. His eyes follows her hands telling movements. It makes her feel exposed on every level.

"Whatever brings you peace." He stretches back, flat, his hands trapped beneath his head. His eyes flick to the Bulgarian seeker, still poised to swoop in. He recognises the game from the stadium and the fuzzy scoreboard. Conversationally, he drawls, "that was the last game he played well. He should have quit while he was ahead." His head turns to watch her sheathe herself under the covers. She feels like there is a message in there somewhere. He rolls onto his side to face her.

"I came to tell you about the intern," Malfoy says softly, "_that_ day." His fingers hook into the V of her pajama top, his thumb circles the top button. After a pause, his drowsy voice recounts, "your husband bled like a stuck pig, it was everywhere. I like this place better. Nobody died here."

When she thinks he sleeps, she stares at the Bulgarian seeker with a beak of a nose and dark ferocious. She knows that the intern was connected to Krum, but not quite so intimately. She knows the intern had been to her house, because she dropped her favourite scarf clip, two-headed eagle made out of jet.

In the dark, dim green light filters up towards the mezzanine. Her voice whispers, "what are you waiting for?"


	6. Chapter 6

Malfoy was up before her and so, has possession of the small galley kitchen. Coldly sober, bare foot and bare chested, he wields a skillet with more finesse than she wields her wand. She perches the other side of the breakfast bar, warming her hands around a mug of tea and watching light play across the lean muscles of his back and shoulders marred by the red scrapes she inflicted scant hours ago. Bacon fat spits, protesting the egg white daring to come close.

"It would be a convenience."

"A public alliance is unthinkable," she counters.

He stands stock still, bracing his hands wide on the counter top and is silent. The fish slice scrapes against pan and plate. It's hard to believe he could be offended, but that is how she reads it.

"It would be viewed as a consolidation of position."

"Yours."

"Both of us."

"I'm not ready."

He turns and folds his arms. The muscles in his upper arms flex and strain as if his hidden fingers were counting off seconds, fingertip to thumb, one by one.

"It would be good for you, to try."

She doesn't advance the conversation, concentrating instead on the full English breakfast presented with a slide of his hand.

"Thank you."

"I won't ask again."

It sounds more like a warning than a statement of fact. It sounds more like, you are either with me or against me. She can see the muscle jumping in the corner of his jaw, it's a bare indication of what it cost him to ask in the first place.

He takes a highball glass, cracking two eggs into it with one hand. In the other is the 'Ah-so', with his slim fingers curled inside and around the brass hand piece.

"What is this? He thrusts the device underhand, as if it was a poignard or stiletto, seeking a soft underbelly. The line of his muscles, from wrist to shoulder stand out in an echo of the dance of death. Hermione looks away.

"It's a bottle opener. For corks," she tells her plate. She stabs at the bacon, nicking the fried egg yolk so that it bleeds yellow and seeps across the plate. "Be careful, it's sharp."

"Doesn't look too dangerous to me." He rests the hand with the 'Ah-so' on the countertop, while he pulls a carton of milk from fridge with the other and starts to pour it into the glass.

"Looks can be deceptive," Hermione says mildly, squaring up and shaking her hair back. She draws her fingertip down the column of her neck, watching Malfoy's face from under deliberately lazy lids. He seems helplessly drawn and it makes her heart race. At times, she doesn't know if she is the moth or the flame, but she wants to be the flame. She is good, with fire.

When milk overfills the glass, Hermione goes back to eating her breakfast, aware from the periphery of her vision, of the whiteness of Malfoy's knuckles, still clenched around the bottle opener.

-:-

There is a moment of awkwardness at goodbye, when he stoops briefly to offer a kiss and there is a confusion of what was supposed to go where, with lips and hands and noses, culminating in her rearing away.

"What's the problem? I _slept_ with you." He snaps.

"It's different." She is at odds to explain. It doesn't matter, but it does. She knows him, but doesn't.

"It's a state of mind." Perhaps to him, that's how these things are. She thought she was the same, but finds she is not. This is why she is in the Ivory Tower and the intern was under the Tube.

"Fine," she sounds mulish, even to herself. She closes her eyes and after a moment, his lips brush against hers, soft and unthreatening and break away again. He lays her palm flat over his chest, over the trip hammer of his heart, her hand stretches, so that the palm lays flat and her fingers flex up, away from him. His jaw nudges her cheek, the whisper of his breath baits her skin. Her fingertips ground themselves in his firm flesh, he smells sharply clean, of toothpaste and temptation. No part of this feels like the humorous tanglings she had with Ron. Perhaps this is the feeling he was looking for.

"This is a state of mind?" Her voice is more gravel than words. The words resonate with other meanings. Her body has a mind of its own, unconnected to reason or rationality it decides it needs him, as a crumbling tower needs the scaffold, it _leans_. His feet seek a firmer footing, his hardness brushes the back of her hand, she turns her palm outwards and slides the heel of her hand down it, making his breath catch as her other hand tangles in the hair at the back of his head, urging him forward.

His lips find her jaw, soft, persuasive lips hiding teasing, testing teeth that short-circuit her brain. She doesn't think of anything much other than his arm slipping behind her and his hand splaying against her lower back, pressing himself more fully into her hand. Her head tips back, like her neck gave up or being this close to him simply turns bones to jelly.

He is slowness itself in the tender exploration of the hollow of her throat, the hard nub of her collar bone and the sloping rise of her shoulder exposed, by the fingertip slide of her robe along and along and any second it will be off her completely, leaving only the silk shorts and chemise she threw on after her shower. The peaks of her breasts brush his chest through two layers of clothing, dredging his hand from inside her dressing gown to cup her throat. His lips find hers again. This kiss has an expectation that things will not finish with goodbye. She forces her eyes to obey and open, his eyes are tight shut, the furrow in his forehead makes him look pained.

His hand slips from between them to behind her neck, fingers drifting into her hair to cradle her scalp, his hips sway a rhythm, into her and side to side, promising relief, promising oblivion, for a time at least.

"Hermione?" His whispered growl against her lips shocks her as much as the first time she heard it, by the orange firelight of a waning hearth in the house she used to call home.

"You should go," she whispers. "You should go." His arms drop away and she turns her back, drawing a ragged breath. "You should go." She braces a palm against her lips to stop herself saying it again. Or something else, like, 'I don't mean it.' Or 'stay.'

"Where are you going today?" he says to her back.

"Out." There are plans. A visit to the seaside, an old friend. A perspective to be had, perhaps.

"It would be good," he says again, "for you, to try."

Her front door closes with barely any sound at all.

-:-

Hermione dresses in a daze while a second mug of tea makes itself in the kitchen. She unpacks the penultimate box from moving here, taking the last of the space on the Billy bookcases. The boarded up fireplace nestles between them, she could join the Floo network with a little thought if she wanted to. The odd little garret suits her perfectly, even with Malfoy in it there was space to be both together, and apart. In the back of her mind, Malfoy's voice whispers, _it would be good._

She reads the most recent book Krum sent her from cover to cover, sat side on in an overstuffed chair, with her feet stuck out over one of the arms. Every piece of her aches. She has a job to do, to not think about why and whether her visitor will come back tonight. The History of the Durmstrang Institute details as much about the building itself as the teaching it offers. Their training is not so very different from hers, only tradition makes it look that way.

The Dark Arts are taught as a matter of course, the book emphasises the point that Magic in itself is neither good nor evil, it simply is. Necromancy is no different to a Muggle telephone, it would have the reader believe, death is a state of mind. The chapter on the history of wandless magic is of particular interest in the light of Malfoy's proclivity. Frequently manifesting in children, Durmstrang considers it an indication of singular strength, especially if physical contact is made at the same time when a spell is cast. It makes for especially talented healers, or close quarter assassins.

When the Muggle timepiece on the mantel reaches 11:55, she stows the book, gathers a bright blue windcheater jacket and apparates out. Inside a fortune teller's booth, she reappears with a quiet popping noise. Situated midway along the Palace Pier on Brighton seafront, she is quite alone. The blinds are already drawn and the sign flipped from open to closed. She exits swiftly, breaking into a smile at the sight of Molly's garish wear. If there is anywhere where the odd is accepted, it is here.

Molly beams back. "How's life in the big city treating you?" She opens her arms wide, engulfing Hermione in a tight hug before holding her at arms length. "Good? Not so good?" she asks doubtfully, linking her arm in Hermione's and pointing them towards the entrance to the pier.

Hermione drives away a frown and falls in alongside, hunching against the bitter breeze coming off the sea. It is good of Molly to not mention how swollen her lips are and the scruff rash on her jaw. "I like being able to walk to work."

"You always did have that Muggle in you."

Hermione shrugs, uncomfortable as always talking about herself, "so what are we doing? Sightseeing? Shopping?"

"I booked us into Browns for 12:30, we can get a bite and you can tell me everything."

Hermione bobs her head, sure that 'everything' should probably include a mention of Draco Malfoy and equally sure that it won't.

-:-

A little over a mile away, waves smash themselves to froth and droplets on what remains of the iron pilings of the old West Pier. The fanciful pavilion and concert hall are long fallen victim to the twin enemies of wooden buildings everywhere, weather and fire. Only the superstructure survives, like the blackened ribs of some unimaginable beast.

A lone figure wrapped in a grey cloak peels itself from the meagre shelter of a rusted girder, cursing the wind and spray that soak it from every direction. Beneath the vaulted hood, black eyes in a grotesquely enlarged hairless head, reflect the stormy seas in a sweating face. They squint the scant mile to the other pier, in all its Victorian glory. Viktor's information is a week old and clearly inadequate to the task. He must see her. He has to know what happened.

The tickle in the back of his throat that plagues him starts again, it is the price of genius and genius must be fed, or it devours itself. Silently he accepts that he must wait for her at home. It is his least favourite option, but turning up at the Ministry would be impossible and there is so little time. She will have wards set. It will take time for him to break them without alerting anyone.

A gloved hand grapples inside clothing for a squat flask, a dose of the cloudy liquid culminates in a wheezing cough that unsteadies the figure sufficiently for it to topple towards the unforgiving waves. Moments before impact, the figure winks out of sight.

-:-

Malfoy walks the streets of London. His dark apparel marks him out, but not excessively so, from the other pedestrians making their way to and from on a Saturday morning. From Hermione's address in Whitehall Court, he walks, through the backstreets between the buildings that dwarf them, to the edge of the expanse of the Strand. He considers walking behind one of the monuments that litter the pavement along its length and disapparating, but the stroll is helping to catalog his thoughts.

The date for the first invitation he offered Hermione has long gone, for drinks in a private room at the local watering hole close to Malfoy Manor. The second was for a light lunch at the American Bar, Sunday last, thinking that she would enjoy the surroundings, if not the company.

There was again no reply, in fact Hermione's behaviour has been as if she had never received them at all. He finds this thought especially troubling in the light of the events surrounding the Eagle's henchmen or in the most recent case, woman. In the hope that he would provoke some reaction from Hermione, even it was only an irate recipient lying in wait for him in his office, he upped the ante to the one thing he worried would frighten her off: Dinner, at what's left of the Manor.

A black cab slows as he draws to a stop at the edge of the kerb. He feels as if he is on the brink and the next leg of a journey waits for him in the wings, if he could only persuade himself to jump. He gives a hollow laugh, recognising it is not himself he needs to coerce, moreover his usual methods do not appear to be having the spontaneous effect they normally achieve. It would be ridiculous, he chides himself, to expect Hermione to behave like other women. She is so very definitely, 'other.' The taxi stops, engine idling, it accelerates away when he does not respond.

He crosses the Strand. From there, he saunters through narrow streets to St Paul's Church with its portico front, startling blue clock face and golden hands. A tourist plaque tells him about Inigo Jones, 1633, and that it is known as the Actor's church. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, angling his face to the watery sun, mulling on how best to proceed on winning over the leading lady in the stage play of his life. For want of anything better to do, he re-orientates himself and sets off at a brisk walk towards the Ministry.

-:-

Molly is greeted at the door to the restaurant like an old friend and the pair of them are ushered towards a quiet table at the back of the dining area. Molly presses Hermione into accepting a Bellini as an aperitif. The sweet and heady cocktail does something to settle Hermione's nerves enough for her to make an opening.

"I'm…I'm seeing someone," she blurts.

Molly's menu twitches, lowering far enough for her Mother-in-Law's eyes to twinkle mischievously over the top of it.

"No shit, Sherlock," she says crisply. "Want my advice?"

"Not really," Hermione mumbles, racked somewhere between embarrassment and guilt.

"Is he good to you?"

"He is good _for_ me. Challenges me," Hermione glups.

"Ministry?"

"Yes."

"Mysteries?"

"No."

"Good, never crap on your own doorstep."

"About Ron….."

"He died. You didn't." Molly's clipped tones are belied by the warm smile on her face. "I was worried about you for a time. Older?" She presses.

"Not exactly." Hermione murmurs, she can almost hear the cogs clicking over in Molly's head.

"Malfoy?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"I don't know. He talks about dinner with his Mother a lot."

"Talks or invites?"

"Talks, I think." Hermione frowned, thinking about the wax seal fragments. "I think someone is going through my mail tray at work. "Should I?"

Molly swirls the orange liquid in her glass. "My professional opinion?" Her thoughtful face closes one eye, stating darkly, "Death stalks you still. Be not alone." Hermione stares across the table in stunned silence. Molly jerks her head up blinking rapidly. "What did I say?"

"Something about Death stalking me," she replies wryly. "I'm sorry I asked."

"Pfft, death stalks everybody," says Molly cheerfully, "if you think about it. Now, what looks good enough to eat?"

-:-

Two sea-bass, a very acceptable Sauvignon, one chocolate mousse and a crème caramel later, Molly flags down the server and asks for the bill to be added to her tab. At Hermione's quizzical eyebrow she shrugs theatrically. "What? I like the food here."

They leave arm in arm, bundled up against the weather. They walk back the way they have come, along Duke's Lane, poking their noses into gallery windows. When they reach the sea-front again, Molly kisses her soundly on both cheeks.

"I expect an invite to the wedding you know."

"Wedding?"

"And if you name you first child Molly, I'll snot-sob all the way through the christening."

"Child?"

"Now, see if you can get home before him."

"He's coming back tonight?"

"Yes of course, didn't he say?"

"Do I want him to?" Hermione asks dumbly, then worries because there is nothing laid in for Supper. Molly always said that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, _making sure the knife is sufficiently sharp, then angle up and right, to reach the heart._

Molly grasps Hermione's shoulders and gives her a little shake. "Look forward, not back," envelops her in a bone crushing hug and bids her goodbye.

Hermione watches her go. Surreptitiously casting a _tempus_ charm, she clicks her tongue. If she hurries, there will be time to visit the Butcher at Hurst on her way home.


	7. Chapter 7

"Colwyn isn't it?" Malfoy lingers at the open door to Hermione's office. He thought he'd look in, on the basis that if he came to work on his days off, she probably did too and 'out' wasn't much to go on.

A young man looks around guiltily, from a position one foot inside the office and one foot up in the air. The head and neck appear to be the only part of the victim under independent control. The position of his inert body suggests he was trying to leave.

"Oops," remarks Malfoy dryly, "let me get that ward off for you dear boy. _Finite incantatum!"_ When that doesn't work, Malfoy frowns, working his way backwards from acceptable wards to the more dubious of origin. The one he finally counters is foreign and very, very dark, one feature being that it would let a perpetrator in, but not, then out.

On wobbling legs, the Ravenclaw scuttles around Hermione's desk and half falls into her chair. Malfoy quietly clears his throat. Hurriedly, Colwyn scoops up a box of chocolates centred pride of place on Hermione's blotter and clutches it to his chest. Malfoy's face slips into something comfortably impassive. The interloper wipes his spare hand down his pants, leaving a faint but discernible smear of black wax.

"Worked here long?" Malfoy presses.

"Um, I can't talk to you, you know? Colwyn fields officiously. "Can I help you with something specific?" His adam's apple bobs, well aware he is in the wrong office and has been discovered by completely the wrong person.

"She really is lovely, isn't she?" Malfoy muses.

"I don't know what you mean."

"Chocolates? For the Boss? Not quite in the same vein as an apple for the teacher now is it?"

"She…Hermione…Ron's gone. She shouldn't be alone," Colwyn says desperately. He scratches distractedly at his nape. A small clump of hair detaches, and settles on the shoulder of his sweater vest.

"And you're volunteering? Lovely idea. Bit dangerous though isn't it?"

"She needs someone dependable, someone who understands how important her work is to her," Colwyn states strongly. A vein throbs darkly on the side of his forehead.

"And you are that man." Malfoy says with certainty. "As her most valued _assistant_. How were the Bulgarians anyway?" He adds flippantly, making his way to the chair opposite. Within seconds, he realises Hermione has furnished her office with the most uncomfortable seating humanly possible, probably on the basis that if people are not encouraged, they will not stay. "Someone is trying to kill her. And will try again, remember Ron?."

"Rubbish! The papers said Ron was working on an experimental design for the Joke Factory."

"Since when, do you suppose, a joke flays a person's skin open so that the spine is exposed and then rips out the brain, along with most of the spinal neural network?"

The chocolate box clatters to the desk. "Pardon?" Colwyn tugs at his open shirt collar, swallowing bile.

"The trouble with the media is that they suppress the good stuff and make up rubbish about what's left. You do know I discovered the body?"

"Well, I…"

"And I am a _personal_ friend of the family."

"Really, that's not…"

"Hermione's well-being is very dear to me." Malfoy stops, surprising himself with his own sincerity.

"She doesn't like you." Colwyn says petulantly.

Ignoring the sharp lance of hurt, Malfoy rises to over the desk with his hands braced on its surface.

"So I would appreciate it, if you returned that little something you have in your inside pocket, to me, on the basis that I have a vested interest in her receiving it."

Colwyn's ruddy cheeks take on the burning hue listed on paint charts everywhere as 'caught red-handed.' He looks sharply away from the older man's penetrating gaze.

"You like her quite a lot, don't you?" Malfoy says soothingly as Colwyn extracts a badly misshapen invitation to dinner at the Manor, and grips it tightly enough to kink the parchment. Flakes of black and gold sealing wax twist peacefully onto the pristine cream of Hermione's blotter. In reaching for the parchment, Malfoy inadvertently brushes the Ravenclaw's clammy hand; the pictures framed in his young adversary's mind are horrifying. _The Bulgarians are drinking brain…what?... elixir? _A rising tide of disgust tinged with horror and a touch of panic charges Malfoy's system with adrenaline, while Colwyn reaches a hand again to his inside pocket.

"What can you offer her that I can't?" Colwyn almost sobs. "Your family name is synonymous with treachery, your money is tied up in rebuilding a school and the last person who gave more than two shits for you ended up de.."

Malfoy does not have time to go for his wand, instead, he thrusts his palm forward until it connects sharply with the base of Colwyn's throat.

"_Stupefy!"_ Malfoy draws in a deep breath to control his breathing, finally answering the question succinctly with the words, "a great, big, cock."

Malfoy calmly jerks his dinner invitation from Colwyn's hand, carefully eyeing the young man's other hand going for his wand. He is so intent on doing so, he does not notice the Ravenclaw's face turning swiftly blue and latterly grey.

Whether it is because the spell was wandless, or the manner in which it was delivered, his would-be assailant silently suffocates to death. By the time he realises, there is nothing to be done, but wipe memories from the portraits looking on in shock and his fingerprints from the desk and doorknob, because he nothing, if not thorough.

-:-

Malfoy seals Hermione's office after some small difficulty with other wards, partly because his mind keeps straying to this morning and the stop-motion animation that was Hermione stroking her own throat. First one fingertip and then, with her fingers spread around the width of her throat, slowly up and squeezing a little, down. His cock jerks enthusiastically at the prospect of taking the idea further.

His fingers find her portkey in the bottom of his pants pocket. He winds the chain once around his fingertip and squeezes the ceramic stopper briefly in the palm of his hand. The fierce tingle in his skin tells him that it would work again, if he wanted to use it. It is cold. _Too cold for you?_ he thinks, and more, about her answer. _It's not healthy._ There is nothing more healthy than a man and a woman seeking pleasure in each other, and she is what he has wanted for the longest time.

He slides the dog-eared dinner invitation into his own inside pocket and takes the elevator to the floor where his offices are located. He should draft a note to the clean-up squad that operate under his control to manage the situation in Hermione's office.

Silently he pads through the corridor that is his domain, breathing in the peaceful silence until he arrives at his secretary's desk. The woman old enough to be his mother and with a face only a hatchet could love, glances at him over the tops of her spectacles.

"You're late," she adds waspishly," Sir."

"Go home, Abrigal." He says lightly, "take the day off, it's the weekend."

"You need to see this," she hands him a crumbling piece of parchment, gathering her personal items. "Just came through unofficial channels. The owl that delivered it is dead. Merlin only knows how it got here so fast."

There are ways of travel, Malfoy knows, that take something from a soul. To force a dumb animal to do so is the height of cruelty, but he is grateful nonetheless, because the paper tells him something that sends a chill from his neck to his hand tooled Oxfords. _Viktor Krum breached Bulgarian customs an hour ago, no visa. _

"Sure you don't need me Draco?" Abrigal says quietly. "Krum hasn't been seen for years. His interviews are only ever his voice, over old photograph from his Championship days."

"Everything is fine," Malfoy says thoughtfully. "But come in early Monday please."

"Of course."

_"Incendio!" _Malfoy drops the burning parchment and _evanescoe's_ the ash. "I'll walk you out."

When the elevator car gates have shut behind them, and the sensation of motion makes her stomach lurch unpleasantly, Abrigal looks Malfoy directly in the eye and says, "how are…things? Narcissa said to ask you where you were. We made inroads into you Father's 1924 Dow's Port collection, until she forgot about it. She's good for you, if she is who I think she is."

Abrigal reads people well, it is in the nature of her role, as gatekeeper to one of the most powerful men in the Ministry. "But the last visit I am officially aware of had a dead body at the end of it, so you won't mind my particular concern."

Malfoys eyebrows climb into the untamed tousle of hair that Hermione left him with this morning, since he quite forgot to check it after leaving her apartment.

"Ridiculous," he replies, but Abrigal just lifts her chin at his shifting eyes and scuffing feet. His hand jingles the portkey in one pocket, the bobbles on the keychain tickle the pads of his fingers.

"Stupid, stupid man," says Abrigal.

"Fine, I like her. More than usual," he says awkwardly.

"Is Krum connected?"

"It's probably better if you don't know."

Abrigal nods sharply and reaches to open the guard doors.

"You should tell her you like her," Abrigal says over her shoulder, now certain that he is in yesterday's clothes. "And mind your manners."

"And that would be why, exactly?"

"The Black Widow is not one to trifle with," she says darkly. "She plays for keeps."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Scratch a lover and find a foe," she comments. "Dorothy Parker, Muggle." When Malfoy does not look especially enlightened, she adds, "I read the Coroner's report on her deceased husband."

"Ron Weasley was murdered by Krum's mistress." The intern's memories were crystal clear, although unusually did not feature any sound. It was clear though, how sorry Ron was at the intern finding him there alone, his lips repeated the word in the intern's memories, many, many times.

"If you say so," the tone Abrigal uses indicates her complete disbelief in the statement.

Malfoy nods slowly. "I'll bear that in mind." For the first time in an age, he feels wrong-footed. There are no registers for those who practice the darker cousin of Legilimency, the art of implanting memories. The Ministry does not formally recognise the skill, and so, does not measure the ability.

The new information puts quite the twist on both the state of the body he found and how he views his interactions with Hermione. For the first time, he reconsiders her reaction to finding him on her doorstep, with her husband's still warm corpse visible behind him. Not once did she accuse him.

-:-

Getting in was simple enough to spook Krum. Breaking through a sort of stasis field however, takes sufficient time that the afternoon daylight has shrunk to a meagre dusk. In a defensive crouch, and with his wand held ahead of him, he explores the space Hermione now calls home. There is the foreignness of things because they are nothing like his home country, then there is the foreignness that is trying to understand the mentality behind a behaviour he thought so beyond a person.

Eventually he straightens, certain in his aloneness. He touches a book, left nestled half under a blanket on a reading chair, recognising it as one from his own library. His brief smile, that comes with knowing he sent it and she took the time to read it, ebbs with the knowledge of why he is here.

Dim lighting turns from cold blue to sickly green, Krum turns to locate the source. Harshly, his cough barks and has him doubled over. He pushes his hood back in an effort to cool his sweating skull. The dark veins that form an intricate web design throb hard enough that the actual pulse of the fluid is visible through his skin. With a shaking hand, he reaches for his flask and tips the dregs of it into his mouth.

The lighting goes off with an audible click. It is not enough to prevent the tube's discovery and on spying the contents, is but a moment's work to prise off the stopper. The small brain-shaped object, close to the bottom of the tube hurtles around the inner edge of the cylinder, in a frenzy of ever decreasing circles.

A/N Story winds up tomorrow. Hope you have all enjoyed the telling of it.


	8. Chapter 8

Abrigal Baumonte fits a white untipped cigarette into a black holder and lights it by lifting a finger. The blue grey smoke that furls upwards morphs into a wyvern that disapparates in a flap of its wispy wings, behind it forms a kracken.

"I saw Draco today."

"How is he?" Narcissa casual tone is undone by the way she drags the sleeves of her cardigan down over her hands as if cold and twists them cruelly in her fists. Her toes are buried under the slumbering hairy bodies of two enormous dogs.

"Quite well," comes the reply, although in Abrigal's mind the phrase she uses is 'ridden hard and put away hungry.'

"He stayed with Hermione?"

"I would say so."

"Does she know what we did?"

"Hard to say. Voicing displeasure of one's husband in the privacy of one's lavatory cubicle is not the normal method by which I receive my instructions, but she knew I was there," _after_. Abrigal does not say that Hermione looked preoccupied, into the mirror above the sinks as if she was looking through it, rather than at her reflection in it.

"You said the Weasley boy was having an affair. No-one should have to suffer the same indignity that I lived through."

"We all have own demons," Abrigal agrees mildly. As if to illustrate the point, the cigarette smoke takes on the attributes of something with horns and a tail.

"Should we expect him home tonight? The dogs miss him."

Abrigal withholds a smile at the way said dog opens a bleary eye and rolls it in the direction of its mistress, before closing it again.

"Hmm, let's see." Abrigal sucks hard at the cigarette holder, issuing a stream of smoke that forms itself into a smoky, wobbling ball. The street it shows is not unlike the one that houses the Ministry buildings. It has the same regal architecture, wide pavement and black iron railings with intervals fronting tall, wide, regency doors. A louche figure with white blond hair and hands jammed deep into dark overcoat pockets straightens with determination and turns towards the smoke ball.

Abrigal spins the view by 180 degrees with the wave of a hand, so they can see what he sees. A young woman in a windcheater and carrying a parcel steps steadily towards the viewers. She is biting her lip, but her eyes are lively and expectant. Her face has colour in it, brought on by a day in the fresh air and the thrill of life ahead of her.

"Not, I'd say."

At that moment the tall slim figure of Severus Snape steps through the doorway. He drops a kiss on Narcissa's perfectly coiffed head and in the same moment the woman's tense demeanour dissipates. Her arm sweeps up to capture Snape with a hand behind his neck. The low murmur of endearments between the couple are the signal that Baumonte was waiting for to allow her release.

"I'll see you at the Class reunion later this month." She neither expects, nor receives an answer.

The crackle and hiss of embers in the grate disturbed by air sucked into a void, is the only marking of the third wheel leaving the building.

-:-

Hermione's windows are dark when Malfoy arrives outside of her building. Rather than risk the potential of her wards at home being as strong, or stronger than the wards on her office, he waits outside.

He props himself against the black painted metal railings that line the front of the building. A few yards to the right, a small, white metal sign roundly disabuses people of the notion of chaining their bicycles here. He has a newspaper tucked under one arm and collar turned up against the encroaching evening chill, and looks entirely at home. He nods to a woman walking a Pekinese; after she passes, he clears his throat with a hand over his mouth and mutters, "rat on a rope." He waits, patiently impatient.

Frequently, Hermione reverts to her Muggle heritage and walks places, not least because it confuses the Wizarding fraternity. She slogs her way up four flights of wide, shallow steps and one twisty staircase to the little apartment in the Gods of Whitehall Court, and tells herself it does her good. After she has caught her breath.

She has a mind to do it again this evening, which is why she re-apparates behind a telephone box at the end of her road. Balancing a waxed paper packet of organically reared steak and a jar of hot, home-made horseradish sauce, head down, she fumbles for the key to her front door in her coat pocket and strolls the short distance to the building's public entrance.

Catching sight of the striking figure, dark with a halo of blonde-white hair, waiting for her starts her blood singing in her ears. Her breath comes faster, as do her footsteps. She bites at the corner of a smile threatening to spill into the public domain.

Without asking, Malfoy takes the wax paper bundle and weighs it in his hand. After Molly, she was sure he would be here. She is less sure about what comes next. Malfoy has a reputation that is both enviable or unenviable, based predictably on the gender of the perceiver.

"I thought you were going home."

"Which is why you bought dinner for two." When he leans in to chastely kiss her cheek, she does not lean away, rather she angles her face so that where it lands is closer to her lips. The surprise in him is evident, by the slowness in which he draws away. "Where did you go today?"

"Where did you." She is not in the habit of explaining herself. It has caused her trouble before and she has learned her lesson well.

"Work, and?"

Hermione looks down, at the hands in possession of her packages and thinks about how to bring an ex Mother in Law into a conversation with a new lover. Molly will have seen one future, she was less explicit about how to bring it about.

"I had my future read today." There is a nagging prickle between her shoulders. The sign of a ward breached and broken still. She glances up, towards the darkened windows nestled in their little apex in the roof.

"What's in it for me?"

Her attention snaps back to him, there is a distraction to her eyes that makes him uneasy. It feels as if she is not entirely here.

"Dinner." The picture of her apartment she projects in her mind is fuzzy at best.

"And after."

"After?" The ward that was broken was close to the boarded up fireplace.

"Is there more, after?"

"What more is there?" Her voice is distant. A shadowy figure outlines itself against the streetlight's glow from the window, but something looks vividly wrong with the shape it reveals.

The last letter Krum sent detailed the extent of his involvement with her experiment, transplanted to his native soil. In a way his actions proved only that he had nothing left to lose. He sent with it the History of Durmstrang, looking for her understanding of his actions, so different from the original intent of her design.

She knows the sort of noise that the ah-so grating against the kitchen counter top will make. It is just enough to draw a person's attention - to face the small kitchen and set a person's back to the bookcase.

"I want to stay." Malfoy says with a huff. He is unused to conversations when the other party is so obviously elsewhere. The touch of his hand on her shoulder grounds her. She sways enough for him to make a point of steadying her.

He thinks he hears her say "_liber libris," _but the hand that runs up the buttons on the front of his overcoat has his more of his attention and none of it relates to his ears.

"Will you show me where you live?" Her fingers walk his lapel and follows the curve of the heavy wool cut, over the ridge of his collar and into the hair at the nape of his neck.

"Now?"

"Now." The first book thudding into a shadowy shoulder is a surprise. The second and third come in quick succession, striking sharply at an oversized skull. The fourth catches a temple in the same space occupied by a heavily throbbing vein that bursts on impact. More books fall, some hovering, before dropping under their own weight, smashing onto the head and shoulders of a figure fallen to an Axminster rug.

Hermione doesn't have to exert much in the way of pressure to get Malfoy to kiss her. Even without the use of his hands, his expertise leaves her breathless.

In the morning she will cope with the messier of this evening's choices. In the morning, she will ask for Malfoy's secretary's expert help.

-:-

_Murder at the Ministry:_

_Ministry officials are keeping their lips zipped on unconfirmed reports of a double homicide in the office of a Departmental head. Witch Weekly has it on the down low, that the deceased are being considered as two parts of a ménage a trois that took an unexpected turn. Whose office and the names of the dirty deeders have not been released, but rumour has it that a foreign diplomat is implicated._

_Sport mourns passing of an era:_

_The body of Bulgarian seeker and renowned politician Viktor Krum was repatriated with ceremonial honours today. The Prophet learnt that he had been in London visiting with friends following the onset of a life-threatening illness. _

_Old Hogwartians tie the knot:_

_Long standing lothario, Draco Malfoy, hangs up his spurs by wedding old time rival's widow in a private ceremony at Manor chapel. The wedding party had no comment to questions that Hermione 'mata hari' Granger was involved in the double deaths that reportedly took place in Ministry offices. _

_Malfoy, whose new bride was known to toy with the affections of more than one male during her time at Hogwarts, as evidenced by this newspaper, denounced the claims as preposterous. He would not be drawn on statements by attending staff at St Mungos, that the deaths were directly attributable to dark magic. The new Mrs Malfoy was unavailable for comment._

A/N _liber libris _roughly translated means free the books. Writers improve and are inspired by constructive feedback. Thank you for reading.


	9. Chapter 9

In Draco Malfoy's bachelor pad, a new broom sweeps masculinity into a den and refurnishes with squashy armchairs fit for reading and a quiet glass of wine. Tall bookcases exist in improbable spaces and have little or no room to spare for new additions, although they appear to be accommodated on a regular basis. A wall mounted tank of cloudy water houses creatures he chooses not to study too closely. From time to time he has complained to her he felt like he was being watched. In the one area he claims as his own, pots hop across the hob from boiling to simmer.

In the familiar actions of making supper, Malfoy allows his mind to wander. Hermione should be home by now, but he knows she gets lost in her work. He rolls his shoulders and remembers that she is his, all of her, even the parts she does not share. They have an agreement, that he will not ask and she will be careful.

There are subjects which remain out of bounds, she will not number her lovers, saying only that he, Malfoy is the one that she is with. He has not raised the subject of the letter he once found, but has a firm belief that the Summer she spent with Krum included fact finding of an intensely personal nature. Krum never married, and by correspondence, never let her alone. He talks to her of children, of dogs. She talks of work barely and, occasionally the garden she left behind. After nightmare's that she loves him, loves him and for him to hold her closer and never let go.

Hermione lets herself in with a slam of the front door that took a locksmith and a healthy dose of WD-40 to press into fully working order.

"If you don't feed me immediately, I won't come again."

Malfoy levers himself from the depths of an American style refrigerator.

"Don't make promises you can't keep."

"I don't."

"Liar." The seed of a smile makes her blush. "Making you come has never been a problem. Keeping you quiet though..."

Hermione shrugs off her overcoat and sends it sailing towards the coat stand. "Hush your mouth, Mr Malfoy, the neighbour complaining is your own damn fault. What were you doing in there anyway?"

"Seeing if the light goes off when the door is shut. There's something to this Muggle engineering you know."

"You sound like Arthur, idiot," she adds affectionately.

"Want to make them complain again tonight?"

"Now who is making promises?"

Malfoy deliberately sticks the mere tip of his tongue out. Around it he says, "Come here and say that."

Hermione raises her eyebrows and her middle finger.

Malfoy rolls his eyes, "What happened to you today?"

"I had mail – from Abrigal."

Malfoy turns his back and rearranges the rib-eye steaks almost done under the grill. "Oh yes?"

"Did you know she was going to resign?"

He swings oven mitts connected by a cloth middle over one shoulder and shrugs. "She said she was going home. She said it was time."

"And home is?"

"Was. _Was_ Bulgaria. She said there were new opportunities there now. I've been through three secretaries in as many months and still she has no pity for me. I do appreciate the occasional vodka that appears in my office from time to time though. It greases the wheels, so to speak."

By all outward appearances, the public face of government and even the underworld of Bulgaria has manifested no visible difference. The contents of the diplomatic bag, however, tell a different story. A small roll of parchment bearing a maroon wax seal and the grey imprint of a double-headed eagle wished him well in his marriage and future happiness.

A second copy was addressed to his wife. It suggested that the speculation surrounding her involvement in the recent unpleasantness would die a death dealt by the hand of time and lack of further information. In the meantime, it did no-one any harm for the milieu to have a nervousness in their dealings with those concerned, the author included. It was not signed in the normal fashion, but there was a small circle coloured black, surrounded by eight dots, four on either side, arranged in a neat arc.

"Any wine in that fridge?"

"None for you, if you are going to be snippy."

Hermione slips into the kitchen and runs her palms up his chest and behind his neck.

"How do you feel about bribery and corruption?"

"I feel…" he doesn't get to finish his sentence because Hermione has hooked a crooked knee behind his thigh and his mouth is otherwise engaged. Where she touches him, his skin lights with the fervour of the newly devoted. In the back of his mind is always the thought that his beautiful new wife might be a cold blooded killer, it leaves him walking the knife edge of fascination and fear.

There are games he knows, that dispossess one of the players of their liberty, and whilst he would like to play, he might not get to choose the role.

To compensate, he dominates. A hand beneath her knee and under her skirt to shred underwear's unfortunate barrier. A hurried suck of his own fingers before they are required elsewhere and he is rewarded with the naked skin of Hermione's neck arced away when she throws her head back and moans.

He settles his lips to the base of her throat, flicking licks and teasing sucks while she writhes under his subtle movements. A thumb here, a hand splayed on the small of her back. The hard ridge of his cock grating against her hip with the movements he cannot help but make.

"Merlin, that's good," is the sigh that precedes the stutter of her flesh in his hand and the touch of her fingers against his belt. In seconds, she is spun about and perched aloft the kitchen counter. The ah-so, one of the few transplants from Hermione's apartment, skips away and drops off the opposite edge. It sticks point first in the hardwood floor of the dining area, where it hums like a tuning fork.

The button on his pants will need to be mended, so too the last two buttons on his shirt. She sinks her fingertips greedily into the deep 'v' at the base of his torso. Rather than squirming away, he crowds the space between her legs

"Dinner is going to be ruined," he breathes into her neck, gritting his teeth at her flicking the head of his cock through his underpants, before she snaps the waistband with a finger.

"Miss me?" She says teasing, eyeing him from beneath her lashes. She rests her hands flat behind and leans back, raising her chin.

"Not at this distance," with a hand he frees himself, lining himself up and teasing her with contact that slides lower and eases in. His hands find her buttocks, scooping her up so that the tendons stand out in his upper arms and neck. She draws herself up, winding her thighs tight about him and squeezing him inside. He bites at the inside of her elbow, making her laugh.

"Bed," she whispers.

"If you're lucky," he replies, closing his eyes against the feel of her that will never get old.

He has news he wants to share, there is an apartment he has found, with a courtyard garden that might appeal. It fronts the sea, in the town she visits so regularly. Molly says it will be soon, if he can persuade her to be distracted. He is going to try his very best. Dinner be damned.

A/N OK, finished now ;)


End file.
